


By the Glow of Your Cigarette, Rain and Tears Look the Same

by saucekays



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Bittersweet, Canon Compliant, Coping, Crying, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Mental Health Issues, References to Depression, Smoking, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 18:55:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28675548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saucekays/pseuds/saucekays
Summary: Naruto wakes up in the middle of the night, he and Sasuke go out and sit on the balcony. Sasuke lights a cigarette as he waits for Naruto to speak. A discussion about pain, love, and reasons to keep on living follows.Set vaguely post 698, though they both have their arms so make of that what you will. Just a conversation I imagined between them kind of alluding to everything they have been through and continue to live with. Please be mindful of the tags, this fic includes minor discussion of suicidal ideation as well as themes of depression and other mental health issues.
Relationships: Uchiha Sasuke/Uzumaki Naruto
Comments: 6
Kudos: 78





	By the Glow of Your Cigarette, Rain and Tears Look the Same

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is for anyone who needs it. please be safe <3

It’s the middle of the night, it’s pouring rain, and Naruto is outside. 

He’s perched on a cheap plastic chair there on a fourth-floor apartment balcony, which is protected from the rain by the fifth-floor apartment balcony, its stained and decades-old cement serving a purpose it was never directly intended for. 

He’s lucky that there’s no wind, though. If there had been, that fifth-floor balcony wouldn’t have offered enough cover. 

But the rain is obediently falling straight down, in silvery lines only visible when in front of a light source— like the orangey street lights, or the neon sign of the convenience store at the end of the block, or the single lit-up apartment window in the building across the street which is evidently inhabited by either a fellow night-owl or simply someone who forgot to turn off their overhead lamp. 

The rain falls past every one of these sources of light and ends up on the ground, where it pools in shining puddles that look more like patches of oil or ice under this strange and liminal glow. 

Two light sources are barely too far removed from the rain to be able to illuminate it: the nightstand lamp inside the apartment, which is switched on and shining out from behind translucent curtains, and the glow of a single lit cigarette. 

Not Naruto’s cigarette. Because Naruto isn’t alone on this balcony. 

Sasuke is there too, half-sitting and half-leaning against a plastic storage container. He had insisted Naruto take the chair, in all its cracked and stained glory, and settled for this spot instead. 

Naruto is facing forward, looking out at the rain; Sasuke is facing sideways, and he has never taken his dark eyes off of his lover. 

Once the digital clock underneath the sign of the convenience store reads 3 A.M., Naruto turns his head towards him. 

Sasuke’s face is cast in sharp relief: the lamp indoors catching a sharp and pale cheekbone, shining black hair, and the glitter of the violet Rinnegan at the same time as the cigarette illuminates his lips and nose. 

_He’s beautiful,_ Naruto thinks, and wishes that he weren’t quite so far away. Because of course even on this tiny apartment balcony, he’s not always close enough.

Sasuke doesn’t say anything, and Naruto realizes the other man is waiting for him to speak as he slowly smokes his cigarette to ashes. 

_Of course he’s waiting for me,_ Naruto realizes, _I’m the one who dragged him out here, after all. Sort of._

He had stayed the night here at Sasuke’s apartment, falling asleep in his bed after finishing whatever they had been doing earlier that evening. And then he had woken up, because even after all this time he still does wake up pretty often around this time of night. 

And Sasuke, forever a little too vigilant and unable to find peace even when asleep, had immediately noticed when he had gotten out of bed. 

They hadn’t said anything: they both knew nights like these too well, that much had already been established in the first look they shared during that moment. 

Instead, Sasuke had switched on the bedside light, and pulled on a robe, and draped a blanket over Naruto’s shoulders; then he had wordlessly opened the door to the balcony and ushered Naruto to the chair before sitting (or leaning) against that storage container and lighting his cigarette. 

Naruto can’t remember much of those moments, but he’s pretty sure the convenience store clock had read 2:30 A.M. then. 

He clears his throat. “That your third or fourth cigarette?” he asks quietly, voice still grating despite his efforts. 

“Second,” Sasuke replies, just as quietly as Naruto, yet with an infinitely smoother timbre. 

_So anxiety is worse for your voice than smoking,_ Naruto thinks, despite realizing there isn’t much logic to support this conclusion. It’s just the first thought that pops into his mind. 

“That’s good,” he says, “Because those aren’t good for you.” 

Sasuke only smiles, something sharp and guarded in his eyes as he stares directly at Naruto and takes another deep drag. 

For some reason, Naruto lets out a small laugh. “It’d be pretty stupid if the Land of Fire’s best shinobi died from smoking too much.” 

Sasuke shrugs. “There are worse ways to go,” he reasons, “And I’m sure one of them will take me before these do.” 

Naruto knows it’s a joke, a tongue-in-cheek reference to the dangerous work they do and everything which has ever happened to them, but something twists inside him when he hears those words. “Sasuke,” he says, trying to get the man to keep his eyes on him rather than looking back at the cigarette. 

His use of the other man’s name has the desired effect, and something comes boiling to the surface when those intense eyes stare so deeply into his own. He’s still not good at the whole _talking_ and _communication_ thing, but when their gazes meet he immediately realizes what he’s been so worried about, what he’s wanted to talk about with Sasuke this whole time. 

“Do you ever, y’know,” he begins, voice already cracking under the strain of his emotions no matter how hard he tries to hate them all away, “Think about dying?” 

Sasuke’s face doesn’t move. Something in his eyes glitters more intensely, but Naruto can’t be sure whether it’s emotion or the glow of the cigarette. 

“I’m not… I don’t mean actually being suicidal or anything,” he continues a little desperately, because he really wants Sasuke to understand what has been on his mind, “But sometimes it’s just… you start to wonder why you shouldn’t, you know? Or it’s like… an impulse, where…” 

Sasuke deftly removes the cigarette from his mouth, holding it between two fingers. Now, Naruto notices, it is close enough to the outside to illuminate some of the rain which is still falling. 

“Naruto,” he says slowly, still sounding emotionless, but Naruto can see something beginning to pull at the edges of his eyes and mouth, “I’m not sure if it’s possible for people like us not to.”

“What do you mean?” Naruto asks. 

“We’ve spent a lot of time alone,” Sasuke explains, and Naruto is impressed by how he’s holding his gaze so steadily even with so much pain in the air between them. “We are used to only living for ourselves, and the dreams we chain ourselves to.” 

He sighs, a sound so light Naruto doesn’t hear it: he can only see it in the way the cigarette smoke suddenly blows away. “When I fixated so completely on killing my brother,” — _my brother,_ he calls him, because saying his name would hurt too much right now— “The true reason for my persistence was that I knew I would die without it.” 

“Not,” he continues, holding a hand up before fear can sink into Naruto at the implications of his words, “Not that I would have ended my own life, necessarily. I will never know whether I would have or not. But I would have been less trained in battle, less alert, less willing to do anything to survive. Whether by my own hand or someone else’s, I would have ended up dead if not for my ambition.” 

“That’s kind of how I felt about becoming Hokage,” Naruto confesses, but then he pauses when he notices dark guilt flash through Sasuke’s eyes. “Oh, Sasuke, I know you feel bad about everything that happened because of what you wanted,” he says quickly. “But it’s alright to acknowledge it as the thing that kept you alive, too.” 

Sasuke dips his head, eyes gentler once again, grateful that Naruto has understood even these complexities about his past. Then he motions Naruto to continue. 

“I think it was the same thing with me wanting to be Hokage so badly,” Naruto says again, considering and believing his own words now that it’s so many years too late. “I could feel everyone’s hatred towards me, so of course I felt it towards myself. And at the time I assumed that, you know, no one could hate someone who was Hokage. So as long as I had that future in mind, of a time when no one would hate me anymore, I could keep myself alive, even that self I hated so much.”

“I know,” Sasuke says, gentle and soft, and Naruto is alarmed by the depth he sees in those eyes. He wishes Sasuke didn’t obviously understand so well, even as he is grateful for that level of comprehension. 

Then Sasuke shifts slightly, drawing his robe closer around himself, and eyes Naruto again. “But now you don’t have an ambition like that anymore, right?” he asks. “No instinct driving you forward.” 

“Yeah,” Naruto says, his voice sharpening to the breaking point once again. “I’m not… I’m not thinking about it any more than I ever have, really, but at the same time I can’t help but realize now that I don’t have something like that… you know, like a guardrail. Nothing to hold myself to.” 

Sasuke watches him wordlessly, finally taking another drag. 

“I guess the closest thing I have to that would be, well, you. But I don’t want to— I can’t just be dependent on someone to that extent, not even you.”

“Because something could happen to me, too,” Sasuke intones, and Naruto knows that he’s right even though the words hurt more than anything ever should. 

“Yeah, that, and also I just don’t want to make our relationship like that,” he says, “You know what I mean? Like, we can be there for each other and everything, God knows we already have been, but there’s a difference between being there for each other and helping each other and, you know, being the one reason I don’t go crazy or die or whatever.” 

“Hm,” Sasuke hums in agreement, watching Naruto again. There’s something soft in his eyes, and Naruto has never been so grateful— despite his less-than-articulate delivery, Sasuke had understood that Naruto doesn’t want to create space between them, but that he wants to live together in a healthy way rather than letting himself become some sort of undead parasite. Sasuke had understood all that despite everything and _wow,_ Naruto loves him so fucking much. 

And maybe it’s been building all along, the heaviness behind his eyes and the lump in his throat and the sharp pain in his heart; but to Naruto, it still feels unexpected when he suddenly bursts into tears. 

He folds into himself on that shitty plastic chair, tugs the blanket around himself tighter, and lets his head fall onto his knees as he starts to cry from a place deep inside him. He’s quiet, certainly no louder than the rain all around them, but it’s a little hard to breathe and the sobs shake his body. 

But a heartbeat later Sasuke is beside him, smelling of rain and smoke and compassion, and he must have thrown his cigarette away because then Naruto is lifted up by those strong arms and placed, blanket and all, on top of the storage container Sasuke had been on before. He feels the plastic move slightly as Sasuke sits down beside him, and even in between his cries he considers how funny it would be if both of them were to fall through the lid and land on top of whatever Sasuke was storing in there, but the thought soon flees his mind as Sasuke wraps his arms around the bundle which is Naruto and lets his blond head rest on his chest. 

Sasuke’s robe is soft and comforting with his scent, which despite all the tears Naruto sheds upon it then never seems to go away. He screws his eyes shut and just breathes in as they continue to fall, listening to Sasuke’s heartbeat at the same time. He never wants that sound to fade. 

“Let’s not die, Sasuke,” he chokes out, voice thin with emotion. “Please.”

“Ah, Naruto,” he hears from above him, a gentle tone so certain and so _Sasuke_ that he almost falls in love with the sound itself, “Don’t worry so much. We won’t.” 

“I know,” Naruto says because he really _does,_ even if it’s still a little hard to believe sometimes. “But I still feel bad for even thinking about it.” 

“I understand,” Sasuke murmurs into his hair. “It’s something we may have to think about for the rest of our lives, because of who we are and what has happened to us. But we decided long ago to stay here and because we did, we found the most important thing of all.” 

“We did?” Naruto asks in a small voice, his voice muffled from where it’s buried under him and his blanket and Sasuke’s chest. There are still tears running down his cheeks with no stopping, but he’s not sobbing so heavily now. 

Sasuke hums again, a sound which Naruto can fell through his chest. It warms him on the inside. 

“What is it?” he asks, and he already knows the answer but he asks anyway because he wants to hear Sasuke say it. 

Sasuke obliges. “Love,” he says, and Naruto falls for him all over again. It’s far from the first time Sasuke has said the word, despite how hard it had been for him in the beginning, but Naruto still cherishes it every time. 

Naruto squishes himself up tighter in Sasuke’s arms, trying to feel as warm as possible. Sasuke’s grip on him tightens. 

“I love you,” Naruto says, murmuring the words as close to Sasuke’s chest as possible as if to heal his cracked and strained heart. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

He feels two drops hit his head, and for a moment he thinks the rain must have started falling onto the balcony: maybe the wind has begun to blow, or maybe the fifth-floor balcony has finally given up and started to leak, but when he looks up he is greeted by a very different sight. 

Sasuke has his eyes shut now, and as Naruto watches breathlessly two silent tears roll down each of his pale cheeks, illuminated only by that small lamp indoors as the cigarette is gone now. 

Then he opens them, and even though Naruto has seen him feel these things before and knows perfectly well how much love he feels towards him he can’t help but be surprised at the depth of emotion they betray this time around, too. 

“Naruto,” he says, tone so laden with feeling it causes the man in question to believe that he never wants anyone else to say his name as long as he lives, because no one can say it like Sasuke does, “I love you too.”

He closes his eyes again, causing a few more tears to escape and prompting Naruto to shuffle around until he is straddling Sasuke, from where he can wrap the blanket around the two of them, hold Sasuke in as tight of an embrace as he can and feel every tiny movement of his body as he continues to cry silently, his tears matching Naruto’s exactly. 

Naruto never wants him to cry again, but he thinks that he would rather experience such profound sadness together than see Sasuke go through something he doesn’t understand. 

_That will never happen, though,_ he knows, _because Sasuke and I always understand each other no matter what differences may lie between us and what mistakes we may make._

He takes great comfort in that knowledge, and allows his chin to settle more securely on Sasuke’s shoulder. 

_We’ll live together,_ he thinks, even though they have both just confessed their suicidal ideations. _And we’ll be happy,_ as they sit there with tears rolling down their cheeks. 

They go back inside later, once the cold and the rain are threatening to impose on them despite the blanket they’re sheltered by, and lay beside each other on Sasuke’s double bed, and look into each other’s eyes on that seemingly endless night. When they both fall asleep, the rain is still falling and the darkness is still undefeated despite the valiant attempts of the glow of Sasuke’s cigarette, but their eyes are dryer and their hearts are lighter than before.

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this all at once and as complete self-indulgence, so i'm sorry for any oversights. regardless, if it's not too much, i hope this little piece can comfort somebody out there.


End file.
